If it makes you feel any better, I burned my hand pretty bad when mowing the lawn as a kid when my dad’s exhaust pipe repair fell off.
No harm, no foul is what I mean to say, haha.
I had to fix the exhaust on this one too! This mower came with the property I bought this summer. You'd be hard pressed to find something less maintained than this mower. It was missing both exhaust bolts where the exhaust connects to the manifold. I had some left over "make-a-gasket" material so I used that and some old machine screws that I had available. Seriously, half of the exhaust was just banging around, exhaust leak city with it coming straight out of the manifold.